


Only a Signal Shown

by silver_penny



Category: His Dark Materials (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationship, Canon Compliant, Cultural Differences, Developing Relationship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Season 2 from an alternate perspective, Season/Series 02, attempt made to be, by which I mean somehow I got very into how the concept of the soul differs across worlds, not sure what they are but they're something (they're falling in love), with all of Pullman's diacritic choices!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-21 16:21:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30024504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_penny/pseuds/silver_penny
Summary: Somewhere high up in the Northern latitudes, an aëronaut is guiding his ship from town to town, chasing down a rumour and a legend. In an isolated cabin deep in the woods, a shaman is tucking an old ring into his pocket and waiting on the fate of worlds.In the North, an abandoned portal is lying in wait for the both of them, twisting open wider and wider as old magic begins to rend open one of a myriad worlds.
Relationships: John Parry & Lee Scoresby, John Parry/Lee Scoresby
Kudos: 5





	1. Stanislaus Grumman

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been holding back from engaging with the fandom until this was finished, but I am very glad to finally be able to join in! This story is completed, with only editing left on the last chapters. I’ll post Saturdays for the next month. Title is taken from Longfellow’s “Tales of a Wayside Inn”:
> 
> Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,  
> Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;  
> So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,  
> Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

There’s a lot of downtime in a hot air balloon. Once Lee has double-checked the fuel tanks, marked down their velocity and altitude in the flight books, and circled the gondola a few times, he’s out of busywork. They’re holding steady in the right stratum and all that’s left is to sit back and let the wind carry them. As much as Lee’s come to appreciate the aëronaut’s trade, it’s hardly the fastest way to get around. Lee settles down on the floor of the gondola, leaning back against his bedding and pulling his hat down over his eyes.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit early for a lie-in, Lee?” Hester asks from across the basket.

“Nonsense,” Lee grumbles, crossing his arms over his chest and tucking his hands in against the wind. “When it’s calm enough to sleep, I say sleep. We were up all night against that storm anyhow, and who knows what’s coming next.”

Hester hums, and he feels her hop up beside him and slip her ears under his jacket. They shuffle a bit until nothing’s poking at them from untoward angles and drift off into a daze with the rocking of the balloon. Right before he loses consciousness, Hester twitches her nose into his ribs and asks, “Do you really think we’ll find him?”

They both know that, all things considered, they could be chasing a ghost, could be chasing a rumour. Lee doesn’t bother to voice his confidence; what he knows, so does she.

When they wake up, a few hours later, the wind has been kind enough to carry them within binoculars-sight of civilization, and Lee levers himself up to fiddle with the envelope and the altimeter until he can get them into a westward-flowing airstream. Once he finds it, it’s a quick flight over there, with Hester hanging over the other edge and calling out landmarks. She finds them a good place to land and Lee douses the fire and secures his balloon as best he can in the little town. Down the path is what looks like a proper shipping dock, so he makes his way there first, knocking on the doorway of the customs office until a harried old man picks his way out of the back.

“Yes?” he asks irritably.

“Hullo, sir,” Lee says, “Only I’ve just parked my balloon a little down that-a-way, and I was wondering if I could get a guarantee against it?”

The man squints up at him and Hester sighs against his leg. “A balloon?” he asks.

“Yes, sir, a balloon.”

The customs officer continues to stare, growing increasingly irritated as time ticks by. Lee clears his throat.

“You see, I’m an aëronaut, and that balloon out there’s my airship. And as it’s my livelihood, I’d rather like to guarantee its safety.”

The officer’s eyes had cleared up around airship, in all likelihood due to the Magisterium’s dragging their blasted zeppelins all over the country since Lord Asriel’s little Northern experiment. Bastards, every one, but even Lee has to admit their reach is impressive, and widespread enough to even be incidentally useful every once in a while. The harried officer picks his way over to the window and peers in the direction of Lee’s pointing until he catches sight of wide sheets of canvas. Grumbling under his breath, he nods his head and turns to face Lee.

“Sure can, cowboy,” he says, eyeing Lee’s hat. “But it’ll cost you.”

Lee tries not to roll his eyes and haggles the customs officer down to a reasonable price. He passes over a handful of copper coins in exchange for a signed ticket he tucks deep into his inner coat pocket. Lee tilts his hat down to the officer and heads back out into the cold, Hester picking out a path ahead of him.

The bar seems to be another dead end, all stories and no water, until Sam leans over the counter, eyeing up the stitches in his coat and the calluses on fingers wrapped firmly around his glass, and sends him up to the observatory.

The observatory wasn’t a total dead end, he’ll decide later, shifting on the cold, hard floor with his wrists rubbed raw from the chains. Sure, he was stuck in a Magisterium prison, but at least he had a real lead on Stanislaus Grumman.

* * *

After he escapes – and not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but what on _earth_ had that been, he’ll have to watch his back – he thumbs regretfully at the claim ticket in his coat and goes in search of a boat. The Magisterium are working their way methodically across town, so once he slips their headquarters it’s only a matter of logic and luck to stay several blocks ahead of them, slipping some supplies into his pockets and working his way back down to the riverside just in time to untether an old, sturdy canoe and push out into the water. Hester situates herself at the bow of the little boat and they make it out past the town, rounding every turn they can and putting some distance between themselves and the Magisterium.

He gives it an hour or two without sight of the Magisterium before he lets himself believe they’ve made it out for real. He switches off the engine and wraps up his wrists as best he can with what he has before making himself comfortable against the side of the canoe. The current is pushing them downriver, and the way is broad and still before him. Hester will wake him if anything exciting happens; Lee goes to sleep.

When he wakes up it’s dark outside, but the birds are starting to chirp on the banks of the river. Hester has drifted off on the opposite bench, so he leaves her to her sleep and breaks open the crackers in his coat pocket for breakfast. The quiet and the early-morning rustle of the riverbank is so different from mornings up in the sky: the trees rise up dark on either side, and the motion of the underbrush is so much busier than the open skies and the tiny towns he’s used to. But the snap of the air is the same, as are the colours slowly rising in the east. Once the world is bright enough he’s not afraid of steering his canoe into a rock, he switches the engine on again and lets it carry them forward, keeping a steady hand on the rudder. He gets them a little farther down the river before he throws in the towel. The engine is too loud for the stillness of the morning and he’s starting to get concerned about fuel; he doesn’t want to have to depend on the paddles lying in the bottom of his boat. Besides, the engine wasn’t taking them anywhere much faster than the current itself.

Dr. Haley had said down the river, and he is certainly heading down the river. From here on he’ll have to keep an eye out for anything strange, and hope he hadn’t passed a clue in the night. Hopefully he’ll find whatever sign he's looking for before he passes the next town and risks contact with the Magisterium again. Or before he runs out of food. Or water. Or before Coulter and her sycophants get their hands on Lyra. Or –

“Stop worrying, Lee.” Hester nudges at his arm with her nose. “It’s very loud and distracting.”

“Oh, is that so?” he asks her. “Does that mean you’re not worried, then?”

“Nope.” Hester says. “Not worried at all.”

“I see,” Lee hums. “I didn’t realize we were so laid-back about this life-or-death quest.”

“That’s your fault, not mine.” Lee bites back a smile, and then a retort when he sees Hester go perfectly still. He glances off to the right, where the underbrush rises up into the trees, but he can’t see with his lousy human eyes whatever has spooked his dæmon. He watches her instead, waiting for a signal. After a long, tense moment with his heart pounding away in his throat, she settles back down, and Lee feels himself unclench alongside her.

“Pull over the boat, Lee,” she says quietly. He slides a paddle out and anchors it at an angle on his left side, feeling the resistance of the river as the canoe slowly cants in the other direction and the bow turns toward the riverbank.

“What did you see, Hester?” He finds himself whispering, pitching his voice lower than the birdsong and the wind in the trees.

“That was an osprey,” she whispers back. “Shouldn’t be up this far north, and regardless it should have tried to eat me.”

Lee switches the engine on, leaning hard on the rudder, and they’re making actively for shore before he realizes what that means. “Dæmon?”

“Dæmon,” she confirms.

And a bird dæmon is often a sign of magic. Nothing confirmed yet, but maybe…maybe. Lee tries very hard to keep a handle on the hope swelling up inside him, and he mostly fails. When the canoe bumps into the riverbank, Lee has the paddle secured under the benches in only moments and holds the canoe in tightly so that Hester can jump out. They uncoil the rope from the back of the boat and secure her as best they can to an unwieldy tree growing nearly sideways out of the shore. Neither Lee nor Hester has had much experience tying things down that would tend to go away on their own, but Lee doesn’t think they’ve made too poor a job of it. If they need it later, hopefully it’ll still be here. If they don’t, they can come back and push it down the river to obscure their trail a little more.

Hester takes two great bounds into the mess of the forest floor and then jumps straight up into his arms. Despite everything, Lee laughs; on the edge of something, finally something, he can feel his spirits rising. With a solid helping of luck, he’ll find Stanislaus Grumman by nightfall and be on his way towards Lyra soon after that – and Lee’s always willing to bet a little on luck.

“Now,” he mutters, “if I were a reclusive mysterious shaman…where would I set up camp?” Hester ignores him in favour of the full-body shudder she makes when she’s tired, so he figures he’s going to have to keep on the lookout for this one alone. Besides, he can feel she’s still spooked from the osprey sighting earlier, and had hardly slept the night before besides. He’ll let her sleep.

Slowly, Lee makes his way perpendicular from the riverbank, losing sight of the shore quickly and instead trying to keep the sun in the same place. Unless there’s another major body of water somewhere near, Grumman is unlikely to be more than half a day’s walk from the river, and probably less. So zig-zagging parallel to the river’s path, a few hours in and a few hours out, he should cross paths with some sign of human interaction – some trail marking or burnt-out fire. If a dæmon had been just there, by the bank, then surely a person couldn’t be far behind. Unless, of course, he could separate from his dæmon like the witches could do…

Lee is maybe an hour and a half into the underbrush, hoping against hope he’s still on a roughly straight path, when his instincts start to jangle. It takes him a moment to pinpoint the sources, but when he does, he can’t help but be encouraged. The paths are flatter, the brush is less dense, and he’s almost certain the deep scoring in the tree up ahead is intentional. Hester tenses suddenly in his arms and peeks upwards. This time, when he follows her line of vision, he sees it too: the silhouette of a hunting bird swooping lazily above them and then circling back. Hester jumps down, uneasy, and even Lee is on edge, reminded of vultures circling their prey. Just because he’s on track to find people, he reminds himself, they’re not necessarily friendly people. Considering the state of his travels so far, friendly people are in fact highly unlikely.

They keep going anyway, following the gradually emerging path from the underbrush. Periodically the osprey returns, circles, leads them on. They’ve been walking for not even fifteen minutes when Lee catches sight of a thin trail of smoke rising up into the trees, cutting off abruptly at the canopy. Definitely magic, then. A few more minutes and they emerge into an open clearing with a cabin front and centre. It’s broad and strong, and Lee is shocked and unsettled by its presence. He’d been expecting a campsite, maybe some kind of magical tent set-up, not a single-story wooden house, with a front door and –

And a figure waiting for them out front.

As Lee walks up, his steps suddenly sounding out loud and conspicuous, he fights the urge to take off his hat in deference. This man’s cursed reclusive tendencies have made it hard enough for Lee to find him, and who knew how this was going to go. Better not to give any ground.

But Lee’s not so stupid he doesn’t slow his pace as he steps up to the cabin, stopping several feet back and squinting up to meet the figure eye-to-eye. Has he finally found Stanislaus Grumman?

“You’re a long way from home, Mr. Scoresby,” the man says. He and Hester exchange startled glances.

The figure disappears through the doorway. He’ll take that as a yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an attempt to fill in the empty space for Lee and John in S2; it started as a one-shot idea months ago and quickly spiraled out of control. I’ve done my best to keep this within canon, but I didn’t have the ability to go back and re-watch episodes. As a result this is mostly canon compliant, but reliant on my faded memory, a couple of production photos, and all of the half dozen trailers and fanvids I could find when I began. Thus this is meant to fit neatly within S2, but I may have overwritten or diverged from the show at some points along the way.


	2. Lee Scoresby

The ring is beautiful: a dark turquoise wrapped in silver, polished shiny and bright by years of careful handling. The chip off the edge of the stone is also worn smooth, and it’s through this flaw that John focuses his attention. He calls out to the ring’s last owner, to the person who had taken such care with it for so many years, who had hinged hopes and dreams on its arch. When he closes his eyes, he maintains an image of the ring in his mind’s eye, and he reaches out through that point of contact to the person he needs.

“Lee Scoresby,” he whispers, reaching out. “I call ye, and declare ye, now. Return.” He holds the connection until the summoning has been completed. Then he opens his eyes and stands up, tucking the ring deep into his pocket for safekeeping. Lee Scoresby will want it back when he arrives. For now, there’s nothing more John can do but wait.

When Lee does finally show up on his doorstep, John is startled by his presence, his force of will, by the whole fact of another person after so many months alone with only his mind and his soul. It’s grounding, the way a lightning strike is grounding, and Lee’s assertion of his own quest forces him back into the shape of himself. Lee wants the Knife for Lyra; he wants the Knife for Asriel; that’s enough of an overlap to be getting along with. Or he thinks it is, until Lee makes to leave, turning around to head out the door and back into the Northern wilderness. And that’s not – he’d summoned Lee here, he knew Lee would come. He hadn’t considered what he’d do if Lee doesn’t want to stay.

He’s desperate when he cracks open his old life, fueled by jaded shame and self-pity. But Lee stops when John tells him about Will, turns back to him from the doorway and shares a look with his dæmon. John watches Lee watch him and wonders if there’s still something inside him that Lee recognizes as a father. He tries not to wonder if Will would recognize him in the same way. But it stops Lee from walking out the door, which is the important part, and when John promises to pledge the Knife to Lyra’s protection he reminds himself that this mission will protect his son as well.

He's spent so long dodging the Magisterium, chasing his goals in the company of hunted and bitter old men, that Lee’s goodness and honesty is a welcome relief. It takes him a few stops and starts to realize that he isn’t going to get anywhere with mission statements and long-held grievances: Lee wants to know what he’s fighting for, not what he’s fighting against. So instead, he spills old stories about Will and his mother, about the world he came from, waxes lyrical about free will and free choice and pours out all his hidden hopes for the universe he wants his son to grow up in. Lee accepts another mug of wine from the porch steps and gazes across at him with the wariness his people have for magic, but John can feel the trust building up between them.

“You said something earlier,” Lee says. “About your dæmon?”

John glances up to where Sayan Kötör is perched on the outcropping of their little house and wonders what someone from this world could have to ask him. He’s had a dæmon now for years, and some part of himself is still stunned every time he looks at her and sees his own self looking back. “Yeah?” he asks.

“You said you…uh, you learned about her?” Lee asks.

John nods.

“So does that mean you didn’t…I mean, in the world you come from – where are your souls, in your world?”

John breathes out. No one else has managed to ask about his dæmon without implying he’s some kind of freak, though he should have known to expect better from someone so well acquainted with the panserbjørn. He looks out over his mug and studies the shape of the treetops. “We don’t have dæmons in my world, if that’s what you’re asking,” he starts. “Our souls are…inside of us, mostly.”

He pauses there, waiting, but when he cuts his eyes to the right Lee is just sitting there, patient and listening. John clears his throat. He’s thought about this a lot since he was with the Yenisei Pakhtars, but he’s kept it mostly to himself. Dæmons are very nearly a taboo subject; there are few willing ears, and fewer still who are human. When he tilts his head back, Sayan Kötör is staring directly down at him, and he feels a warmth swell up from deep in his stomach. It’s never been entirely unfamiliar.

“I think,” he says slowly, and then has to stop in order to break eye contact with his dæmon. Some things you can’t say in full view of yourself. “I think in my world our souls were mostly inside ourselves. But I think parts of them were bound up in other people too. In…ah, in the bridges between us, I think.” Sayan Kötör drops down to his shoulder, presses her wing up against his ear and then across the back of his head. It feels like placing your own hand on your shoulder, but it also calls up buried sense memories and impressions: Elaine’s hand over his neck on a cold night, grabbing Will from behind and tumbling him through the air into his lap. Oh, but he hasn’t thought so much of them in so many years.

“Did it hurt?” Lee asks, breaking him out of his mindscape. He catches John’s puzzled look and waves his hand about, trying to clarify. “Pulling your soul out from inside of you.” His hand goes down to run itself in reassurance across his hare’s back; John doesn’t think he even knows he’s doing it.

“Yes,” John says. “Yes, it did.”

Lee nods and takes another sip of his drink.

* * *

John makes Lee stay the night – it’s going to get dark anyway, and he can tell Lee and his daemon are both dead on their feet – in return for a promise to set off first thing next morning. He rummages around his box in the back until he comes up with the hodge-podge makings of a first aid kit, one of those useful ideas they’d never gotten around to implementing in this world. He stares Lee down until the other man lets him see properly to his torn-up wrists and the abrasions on his face. A doctor he is not, but he’d been on enough funding-strapped Arctic missions to be a half-decent field medic, and if his aëronaut falls delirious to infection before they even reach the North then neither of them are ever going to succeed. Lee is almost tense under his hands, waiting for the magic, but John sticks to pastes and warm water and bandages, and he thinks he sees the level of Lee’s trust in him rise again.

The next morning they wake up slowly, as the sun rises, and crack eggs over the stove John has rigged up in the corner. He double-checks Lee’s injuries and then throws everything he needs in his old backpack – some warm clothes, dried meat and bread, his cobbled-together first aid kit and more comprehensive sets of tools for survival and for magic. He shoves an extra belt in for a makeshift gauntlet and slides a long knife down the back where it will rest against his spine. Not the knife they need, unfortunately, but the knife they have.

When he turns, Lee is standing on the other side of his cabin, watching him pack. John kneels down at his little fire and puts it out, shifting the embers aside to make sure it’s good and gone. “Where’s your balloon?” he asks.

He turns back to Lee in the long pause that follows, and the man looks incredibly uncomfortable. John’s stomach drops.

“It’s, uh,“ Lee says. “It’s secured off the bank in the town down by the river.”

John raises an eyebrow. “How’d you get here, then?”

Lee blinks back at him. “You don’t know?”

“Humour me,” John says drily. What exactly does Lee think he’s capable of?

“By boat,” he says slowly. “A little motorboat I liberated from the docks down at the town; it’s tied up on the river down yonder.” Okay, that’s not too bad. John crosses his fingers no one’s seen it yet.

“All right,” he says, glancing one last time around to make sure everything’s in order. It’s unlikely he’ll ever come back, but just in case, he’d rather the place not go to pieces while he’s gone.

He gestures to the doorway and Lee takes his cue, clattering down the outside steps with Hester close behind. John follows, resting his hand briefly on the doorframe and silently thanking the space behind him for sheltering him for so long. As they exit the clearing and plunge back into the forest, he feels Sayan Kötör lift from her perch and circle once, twice, before swooping down to inspect the way ahead of him. Lee hasn’t said anything yet, not about her silence and not about how obviously far away she is, and he finds he’s just – unexpectedly grateful for it.

They push through the underbrush, slowly making their way down to the river and then working upstream along the bank until they reach Lee’s little motorboat. That’s when Lee, wrestling with the knot anchoring the boat to shore, decides to say, “Also, the Magisterium have, uh, have taken over the town upriver.”

“They _what_ ,” John says.

* * *

They’re crouched on the floor of the motorboat, barely half a mile and a bend in the river from the inevitable band of Magisterium guards at the harbour, and they’re arguing.

“Why,” John hisses, “did you leave it on the _other side_ of the docks?”

Lee nearly chokes on his indignation. “Do you know how hard it is to land in the middle of a forest?” he asks. “Besides which, _you_ are impossible to find and I had no _earthly_ idea that the Magisterium were coming, nor that we’d wind up on the opposite side!”

“ _I’m_ impossible to find?” John splutters. “I made it easy for you! Like there wasn’t some kind of light-up trail right to my location. If I didn’t want to be found, believe me you would have _never_.”

Lee glowers. “Look,” he says sharply. “Let’s cross to the other bank of the river and work upwards on the opposite side. If we’re deep enough in, they won’t see us, and we can work our way upriver and curve back down to approach from the west.”

John digs the base of his palms into his eyes, trying to dredge up twenty-year-old tactical training. “No,” he mutters, “That won’t work. The boat – we won’t have a way to cross the river on the other side; the vegetation is too thick to drag it along with us.”

Out of the corner of his eye he can see Hester jump up onto Lee’s lap and nose up underneath his chin. He’s probably about ready to blow a gasket, then. When he does speak, his voice is flat with frustration and impatience

“Do you have a better idea, Mr. Jopari?” he asks. “Because I’m not the one with the magic here.”

“You said Coulter helped you escape, right?” John asks.

“…Yes,” Lee says. “Escape might be a strong word; she tossed the keys into my lap.”

“Did she tell anyone else?”

“I don’t know?”

John glares.

“I don’t know!” Lee says. “How am I supposed to know what goes on in her twisted mind? But –“ he sighs. “Probably not? I did have to sneak out, and she seemed – well, not unsettled, but angry, at the very least, which is in fact an emotional reaction even if it’s at cross-purposes to our goals.

“So you’re an escapee,” John concludes. “Did they know you were looking for me?”

“They knew where to find me,” Lee counters.

“Yes, clearly. But were they looking for you or looking for me?”

Lee pauses. “I think Coulter is looking for Lyra,” he says, his voice so hard and so cold that it gives John a moment’s pause. He had forgotten that Lee was doing this for his own kid, and the reminder of Will is enough to flood his system with the courage and adrenaline this little stunt is going to take. He stands up and starts stripping off his jacket, flipping it inside-out.

“Close enough for me,” he tells Lee, nudging him up with his boot while he shrugs his jacket back on and kicks a loose coil of thin rope out from the bottom of the boat. “Give me your gun.”

“Absolutely not,” Lee says immediately, but he gets up and then sits quickly down on one of the benches when the boat tilts sharply to one side. “What in _tarnation_ are you –“

“They know who you are and what you look like,” John says quickly. “They don’t know anything about me.” He gestures at Lee’s hands with the rope but then throws his hands back up when the man turns fully around to look up at him.

“We can’t go striding in past all those guards.” Lee’s voice is drenched in disbelief.

“Why not?”

Lee squints up at him. “You’re crazy,” he says, as if this is some kind of revelation. John flashes him a too-broad smile. He’s aware that it’s probably not helping his case, but the readiness is starting to build up in his fingers and in his shoulders, and this is going to work. He knows it’s going to work.

Hester jumps down to the bench and makes a kind of growling noise in the back of her throat, her ears laid flat against the side of her head. John takes a deep breath and tries to focus on the here and now, instead of on their path through the Magisterium. _You_ , he can hear Nelson say in the back of his head, _need to get everyone on board before you go charging off on a path only you can see through the wilderness._

“They don’t know what I look like,” he says again. “We don’t even know if they know that you were looking for me. I can hold you at gunpoint and sail us in.”

“That’s the _Magisterium_ ,” Lee says. “You’re not Magisterium.”

“They employ plenty of bounty hunters and mercenaries. Everyone knows who they are, everyone wants to be on their good side.”

No response.

“Mr. Scoresby,” he says quietly. He sits down on the other bench and stares him down at eye level. “Mr. Scoresby,” he says again. “Lee. _I can get us in._ ”

Lee doesn’t break eye contact, but he reaches around and hands his gun to John. John clears the chamber and drops the bullets back into Lee’s pocket; out of the corner of his eye he sees Hester relax. “Thank you,” he says.

“This had better work, shaman,” Lee says.

“Oh, it will,” he promises.


End file.
